


Dearly Fucking Beloved

by SapphicFlaaffy (Mayasato)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Drinking to Cope, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, Spoilers, heavy spoilers, slim jim ment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 20:09:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20512790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mayasato/pseuds/SapphicFlaaffy
Summary: Takes place during the literal and emotional void between Amnesty episodes 28 and 29, with a focus on Aubrey's take on the consequences. If you have not finished episode 28, please don't read this!Aubrey's torn, Duck tries to help. We built this city on hurt/comfort.





	Dearly Fucking Beloved

Ned died.

Mount Kepler had been destroyed and reassembled, the FBI had shut down Amnesty Lodge, Mama had been taken in handcuffs, Dani wasn’t herself, and the whole town had been turned against them.

And Ned died.

And after everything was over, and Duck arrived at the Gate to see Aubrey on the ground, still in shock as Sheriff Owens helped secure Ned’s body to a gurney and load it into his police car, the still-active two thirds of the Pine Guard Bom-Bom Hunters retreated back to Duck’s apartment with Minerva and Leo in tow. The walk was quiet.

Duck didn’t have much more than his own full-size bed and cheap Ikea couch in his place. Leo volunteered the futon he had in his neighboring apartment, but when Jake showed up half an hour later with the other Sylvans in tow, panicking about Mama being taken into custody and Amnesty Lodge being raided and sanctioned off by Agent Stern’s division, they knew that one futon wasn’t going to solve their lodging problems. 

Barclay, Jake said, was last seen trying to get Dani to the hot springs. “He said he’d join us after she was, uh… restored,” he said, softly.

Duck nodded along, before he froze. “Oh, shit, Thacker. Can they get Thacker out of the basement? Without the feds freaking out and all that?”

Jake sighed. “I dunno, Duck.”

There wasn’t much more to say about that. Only things to do now were wait, hope, and pray, if you were so inclined. Duck and Leo were hosting almost the entirety of Amnesty Lodge in their two one-bedroom apartments; they’d done about as much as they could to keep their own safe.

Meanwhile, Ned was probably in the morgue they helped destroy.

Duck ran a hand over his face and sighed. “I’m gonna strip the duvet from my bed for some of y’all to use,” he told Jake and the other Sylvans dogpiled on his apartment floor. “Be right back. Help yourselves to anything in the kitchen, but go easy on the Slim Jims.”

He opened the door to his bedroom, where Aubrey was lying sideways on the bed. He looked at the tear-stained and slightly singed duvet underneath her, and made the decision to close the door behind him.

Neither one of them left the bedroom until dinnertime the next day, but Duck’s houseguests didn’t feel the need to mention his broken promise of an extra blanket.

\--

A week passed. Amnesty Lodge remained under FBI surveillance, and several of Leo and Duck’s neighbors had volunteered to put up a Sylvan or two in their own apartments once their landlord had agreed to housing a dozen or so extra tenants.

Barclay and Dani came back safe two days later. Janelle showed up scant hours after them, Thacker hauled along with her, subdued in a magical hold of her devising. Duck’s landlord wasn’t as keen on having a feral man in the building, but Aubrey had enough money to her name to convince him to let Thacker camp out in a corner of the garage.

Kirby showed up at Duck’s door that Saturday, looking like absolute shit and holding two letters in Ned’s handwriting, addressed “To Aubrey” and “To Duck”. He was already crying as he held them out in offering, and by the time Duck had clumsily ripped open the envelope, so was he. Aubrey ripped the letter from Kirby’s hands and stuffed it in her backpack, unopened. “Not fucking yet,” she croaked.

Kirby nodded and laughed weakly. “I gotcha. It’s, uh, it sucks. Um,” he cleared his throat. “I’m the owner of the Cryptonomica now,” he started to tear up again as he said it, “so if you guys need anything from me, or the store, or the van… It’s yours, just like always.”

He tried for a smile. “Though I don’t think I could do all the hero-ing or whatever Ned did. The three of you all had some kind of supernatural business going on, right? What was Ned’s thing?”

Duck chuckled, flicking his tears off the letter Ned had written him. “Well, he had an OG Narf Blaster.”

“He didn’t have any powers,” Aubrey said quietly. “He was just… a regular guy.”

“No way was he just a regular guy,” Duck argued. “He willingly ‘phooned into a water monster, there’s gotta be something inhuman about that.” Kirby chuckled.

Aubrey didn’t laugh. Aubrey didn’t even look up.

\--

It felt terrible to leave the funeral proceedings to Kirby, but with Barclay and Janelle and Minerva pulling the two of them all sorts of ways, there really wasn’t much time for them to pitch in. They had to set up a new source for the Lodge residents to access Sylvain’s essence. They settled on H2Whoa That Was Fun, which had become virtually abandoned after the FBI investigation of Kepler slowed tourism to a halt. Leo, Sarah, and Duck were training daily with Minerva, and Aubrey and Janelle were trying their best to find a way through to Thacker.

Kirby seemed busy too. He’d been abruptly made the new owner of a business, after all, and that business was a tourist trap that no longer had tourists to pander to. He’d been spending his time going through Ned’s things after finding out he was the main inheritor in the will, and dealing with the fallout of telling Ned’s adoring fan base the news of his death. Saturday Night Dead would be put on an indefinite hiatus.

On the day of Ned’s funeral, two weeks after the day that rocked Kepler, Aubrey refused to get out of bed.

“Aubrey, I don’t wanna make you do nothin’, but I really think you’re gonna feel bad later for not going,” said Duck, tying the laces on his everyday hiking boots.

She lay on his couch, facing away from him. She didn’t move, but Duck thought he heard a small muffled response. “Wha’zat?” he asked, leaning in a bit.

“I’m not going,” she said.

Duck sighed. “Okay. Well you know where it is if you change your mind. I’ll make my speech for both of us, I guess.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Okay, I won’t do that then. I’ll be back in a few hours; take care of yourself here while I’m gone.”

When Duck closed the front door behind him, Aubrey threw the blankets off herself and walked to the kitchen.

\--

The funeral went on for far too long; everybody had something to say about the life of Ned Chicane, human and Sylvan alike. In a town where half the population was still reeling from the discovery of the other half being aliens, it was heartwarming to see everyone come together over Ned. He would have loved the attention, Duck thought.

He’d known Ned for years, far longer than they’d been kicking monster butt with Aubrey, and he was a town staple besides. The sudden lack of him in the sea of familiar faces was… haunting. Pigeon, of course, was missing too, and Duck made a note to try and visit her some time in the coming days with flowers or something. A “sorry you shot and murdered my friend” Hallmark card.

Maybe no gift, then.

As Dave, of Dave’s Dehumidifier Depot fame, was giving his own two cents on Ned’s impact on his life, Duck felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned around to see Minerva, looking nervous and uncomfortable.

“Hey, uh, what’s up?” he asked, hushed.

“Your friend, Aubrey Little, is behaving strangely,” she said, the natural loud and pronounced quality of her speech still coming out as she whispered.

“It’s a hard day, Minerva, she’s in mourning.”

“No, she is-- she is not behaving like herself, Duck Newton. Or, perhaps, maybe she is behaving like a more emotionally exaggerated version of herself. I tried to ask her what was wrong, but she kept ‘flipping me the bird,’ and as you have told me that gesture means ‘fuck off,’ I did just that and came here.” Minerva was patient as she explained.

Duck felt concern spike in his gut. “Was she drinkin’ anything? Like a bottle of something?”

Minerva frowned. “Yes. Is that significant? You humans seem to imbibe bottled drinks incredibly often, so I didn’t think it important to mention.”

“Yeah, I get that, it’s just when someone’s drinking a lot and they’re on their own and in a lot of emotional distress that it’s a problem,” Duck explained, already walking towards where he’d left his skateboard. “Can you give me some time alone to talk to her?”

Minerva smiled. “Of course, Duck Newton. I should pay my respects to the heroic actions of Ned Chicane myself, after all. It’s a shame we never got to meet.”

Duck didn’t hug her then, but he sure wanted to, and maybe he’d ask her if she was cool with hugs later on, and he boarded away back towards his apartment.

The sun was setting as he rode along the sidewalk. At some point he realized there were no cars on the road, so he decided to ride in the street. He swerved across and in between the lane divider lines, trying to think about what he was supposed to say to Aubrey while also pushing away thoughts of her getting alcohol poisoning or doing something stupid in her inebriation. Thoughts of getting back to his fifth story apartment and finding the window open and no Aubrey to be found.

He fumbled with the key a bit, first inserting it into the lock upside down and then turning it the wrong way to open the door. When he got in, face flushed and body disgustingly sweaty, Aubrey was, as Minerva said, sitting in his apartment holding a bottle of liquor. His good whiskey, he noted.

She looked at him, tired. Tears were already streaking down her face. She didn’t say anything.

“Minerva snitched on ya,” said Duck, walking over to sit next to her on the rug. “How much have you drunk?”

Aubrey’s face scrunched up in sorrow, or anger, and she took a wordless swig of the whiskey. “Whoa, whoa, easy, shit,” Duck consoled as she started to cough. “What’s going on?”

She tipped her head back to rest on the seat of the couch behind her. “I don’t know, Duck, what the fuck _is_ going on? What’s-- how did any of this happen?”

“I don’t know, Aubrey.” He looked down at his hands. “It’s hard.”

“No shit,” she snapped. She rubbed at her eyes. “How am I even supposed to feel about everything? God.”

Duck grabbed the tissue box from the coffee table and handed her one. “I mean… Sad, I guess. It’s normal to feel sad.”

“Don’t play fucking grief therapist with me. You don’t know what I’m going through, Duck,” she hissed. “I know what’s ‘normal’ during mourning, my mother died when I was 18. Oh, and guess who killed her?”

This was all news to Duck, and it was also clearly a very delicate situation, so he didn’t say anything, instead willing her to continue silently.

“Ned did!” she yelled. She stood up, fists sparking at her side. “Ned… _fucking_ Chicane killed my mom, he robbed my house and set it on fire, and my mom _died_, and now he’s not even alive to answer for it anymore! How am I…”

She sank back down onto the floor, crouched into a huddle. “How am I supposed to deal with that?”

Duck paused as she started crying again. “Can I hug you, Aubrey?” he asked softly, and she nodded.

He wrapped his arms sideways around her huddled form, tears of his own leaking out of his eyes as she shook.

“I should hate him,” she whispered. “But I can’t.”

Duck rubbed his hand up and down on her arm in a soothing motion. “It ain’t that simple, though. I can’t say I’d be acting any different in your place.”

“I wish I could just hate him or love him,” Aubrey sniffed. “But no, he had to kill my mom and then save my girlfriend. And now he’s dead, and I just…” she choked, “I just want him back.”

Duck blew out a stuttering breath. “Me too.”

They sat together on the floor of Duck’s living room for a long time, enduring the waves of grief and nostalgia as they would crash them over, and one of them would start crying again and the other wouldn’t be able to help themselves in joining in, until they both calmed down and the cycle would start anew.

“I o-opened his letter to me, while you were g-gone,” she stuttered, hyperventilating from her tears. “He told, he told me he wanted me to hate him. And then he saved my fucking girlfriend.”

Duck laughed wetly. “What a dick, giving you a conflicting final message like that.”

“Yeah,” she hiccuped. “He was a f-fucking tool.”

There was silence. Duck asked, “Is that why you didn’t go to the funeral? Well-- it sounds like there were a lot of reasons for you not to go to the funeral, but y’know--”

“Yeah, th-there’s a lot to unpack here,” Aubrey laughed. “I do wanna visit his grave, though. Pay my respects, say goodbye and all that. Just, just more privately.”

Duck nodded and handed her another tissue.

“You can come, though. You should come,” Aubrey amended. “And then we should do another one with Mama and Barclay. Ned deserves a special Pine Guard send-off.”

\--

The day of Ned Chicane’s unofficial Bom-Bom Hunter funeral was a rather busy one, as neither Duck nor Aubrey had told anyone else it was happening. They ended up at his grave around sunset, after hours of running around, smuggling Sylvans to a waterpark and working hard to restore a man’s magically-altered state of mind. Someone else had already left a couple flowers there before they showed up to place his Narf blaster beside them.

“Hi Ned,” Aubrey croaked, her throat already closed up and her eyes burning. “Sorry it uh, took awhile for me to get here. But also, you’re probably glad that I kept the grudge up for a bit, right?”

Duck gripped her hand in his.

“I hate you for some of the mistakes you made. But I know you hated yourself for them too. And I want you to know that… That I don’t forgive you, but I still love you. And I’ll always love you.”

Aubrey clenched her jaw as the tears began to roll down her face. Duck spoke up.

“Thanks for being a friend, Ned. You weren’t always a good person, but you usually did well to be a good friend. And that meant something.”

“I’ll come by another day with Dani so we can both thank you,” Aubrey added. “Might be awhile though; everyone’s busy preparing for the next full moon.”

“We’re gonna fuckin’ finish what we started,” said Duck. “You’re not-- you won’t be here for nothin’, Edmund, we’re gonna make sure of that.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna find that four-armed light-bodied fucker who impersonated you on live television and we’ll kill him again.”

…

“Thanks for everything, Ned.”

“Thanks, Ned. And fuck you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> I hope to god Griffin gives Ned a proper send-off in the epilogue or whatever. I know seeing the characters grieve in-episode would slow the momentum and shit but godDAMN it felt brushed under the rug.
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed my own take. Cried quite a bit while writing this. Hope some of you cried too, in like a good way though.


End file.
